What do you get when you combine IKEA Weaponry with your Shoe Phone? A really bad hotfoot. Also, a Scaramanga Special, aka the infamous Golden Gun. A custom weapon which is designed such that it can pass for a collection of mundane items when taken apart. A device like this is a step above a concealed weapon, as it is intended to pass even a full security screening and frisking.

Reality check: any weapon based on the principle of the gun is going to contain chemical explosives, and any good security checkpoint will test for those. Want to look smart? Base it on gas pressure, springs, or a tiny crossbow, and have it rely on poison rather than impact.

These special weapons are designed in one of two different ways:

Type 1 Version: Various components which may either be functional (eg: a cigarette lighter) or merely cosmetic (eg: a hood ornament) by themselves but they can be put together so it will function as a weapon.

Type 2 Version: The weapon can be adjusted by either disassembling it or by manual manipulation to become something else (functional or cosmetic).

Type 1 Examples

Anime and Manga

Duke Togo, AKA Golgo 13, has been known to use one of these on rare occasions, usually when dealing with particularly paranoid individuals. In Episode 34, he carries out an assassination with a gun created by combining a fountain-pen and several pieces that he had cast on the spot, using a building-model as containers and a specially-prepared bulletproof vest for the material - and just for added kicks, the soft alloy could be dissolved in a conveniently-placed bucket of hot soup. Thus, he took this trope a step farther than the rest of the examples, by assembling and disassembling his gun on the MOLECULAR level...

Comicbooks

In a Mickey Mouse story Goofy had gotten his leg twisted and he was using a crutch he happened to have lying around which had belonged to a relative of his. At one point the crutch gets accidentally broken, and as Mickey is putting it back together he notices that there are bullets in the top support, and he accidentally assembles it into its "rifle" configuration.

Film

The James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun is the Trope Namer and Trope Maker. Scaramanga has a gun which can be assembled from a pen, a cigarette case, a lighter and a cuff link, all made of gold. This allows him to carry his weapon of choice on commercial flights. It was custom made by an underground gunsmith, and fires gold bullets in a non-standard caliber. The material allows him to carry it through metal detectors and airport security. In the novel that the film was based on, he just used a gold plated Peacemaker revolver.

In In the Line of Fire, Mitch Leary smuggles a gun made out of plastic to a dinner speech by the president. The only metal parts are the two bullets that he hides in a rabbit's foot keychain and the two springs hidden in a pen. He trains himself to put it together without looking too, so he can appear even more non-threatening as he assembles it under the table. In an interesting twist, in real life, the FBI had the prop used for the weapon destroyed after filming out of concern that a copy-cat might try to do the same thing.

The bone gun in eXistenZ (called "gristle gun" in the commentary), assembled from the bones of an Alien Lunch and the protagonist's false teeth.

Alien: Resurrection featured a number of hidden weapons, including a shotgun assembled from components concealed as parts of high-tech wheelchair.

The first assassination done by Carlos in C.A.T. Squad is with a rifle that is built from a various innocent items that reside in a toolbox; including a spray can, a flashlight and a clamp.

Literature

Darksaber, one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, has an Imperial warlord attempt to kill Admiral Daala with a knife after she poisoned an entire gathering of other such warlords with neurotoxic gas. Impressive, not only for having the knife be made up of several of his "decorative" medals, but for him having the presence of mind to immediately start assembling it as soon as he realizes he, and everyone but Daala and her assistant, have been gassed. She even gives him an appreciative look of respect as he approaches. He manages to make it to within a single step of her, but by that point it is too late.

The Jackal's gun from the original novel and first film of The Day of the Jackal was built into and assembled from parts of the crutch that formed part of his disguise as a war veteran, which he used to get close enough to, and try to assassinate General de Gaulle. The later film remake just had a big machine gun built into the back of an estate car.

The Doctor WhoEighth Doctor Adventures novel Demontage featured, as part of its James Bond pastiche, an assassin disguised as a wineglass salesman, whose sample glasses could be transformed into a knife and a single-shot gun — neither of which would set off metal detectors.

The Gordon R. Dickson SF story Hilifter (1963) has this pre-Scaramanga pistol: "Whistling a little mournfully, he began to make the next best use of his pile of property. He unscrewed the nib and cap of his long, gold fountain pen, took out the ink cartridge, and laid the tube remaining aside. He removed his belt, and the buckle from the belt. The buckle, it appeared, clipped on to the fountain pen tube in somewhat the manner of a pistol grip. He reached in his mouth, removed a bridge covering from the second premolar to the second molar, and combined this with a small metal throwaway dispenser of the sort designed to contain antacid tablets. The two together had a remarkable resemblance to the magazine and miniaturized trigger assembly of a small handgun; and when he attached them to the buckle-fountain-pen-tube combination the resemblance became so marked as to be practically inarguable."

The Frederick Forsyth thriller novel The Fourth Protocol (1984) features a Nuclear Bomb fitting this trope. Components are either concealed in or disguised as everyday items (including a rubber ball and a transistor radio, as shown in the film version) as they are smuggled in.

In Gorky Park, Investigator Arkady Renko finds a gun disguised as various innocent-looking objects packed in a visiting American's baggage. Of course, he never would have thought to try piecing random objects together into a gun if it weren't for the fact that the American chose such an odd selection to pack.

Timothy Zahn's Quadrail Series features a set of three very valuable ancient sculptures. When assembled, they form a gun that's undetectable as a weapon by the sensors of the titular transport system.

The first book has this in reverse: non-functional decorative plastic guns (used as a mark of status for a certain species)are disassembled and revealed to hide the pieces for highly effective melee weapons.

Live-Action TV

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Heart of Glory", the Klingons Korris and Konmel were able to break out of the Enterprise brig by assembling a kit-form disruptor from their belts and other parts of their uniforms. It's only good for a few shots, after which Korris picks up one of the dead guard's phasers.

Dr. Bashir used one in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Our Man Bashir." No surprise, given that the episode was a homage to James Bond.

In the Babylon 5 episode "Midnight on the Firing Line", Londo had one of these disguised component weapons which he assembled to kill G'Kar. Garibaldi finds out and convinces him not to go through with it. Furthermore, Garibaldi warns him that he will search the ambassador's quarters for weapons and you don't doubt that he would be able to spot the parts assembly of the gun if he found the pieces.

Shadowrun Ka•Ge magazine Volume 1 Issue 12. The Century 220ZX is a 9mm light pistol that disassembles into a cigarette case, a pen, a lighter, a ring and either a brooch or a cufflink. It can be assembled in under 10 seconds.

BattleTech has a few instances of weapons reassembled from their disguise as innocuous items. One particularly creative example in the canon had a belt, a hair brush, and a suitcase convert into a katana. It used the hair brush handle for the grip, the belt buckle for the handguard, the length of the belt for the sheath, and a specially cut and sharpened piece of metal hidden as the bottom of the suitcase for the blade.

Videogames

In Mass Effect 3, the M-358 Talon is used as one of these by Cerberus, whose operatives smuggle the components to the Citadel to use in assassinations.

Webcomics

Liege Fablulo of the Insecticomics is actually a sentient version of this. By himself he's a fluffy dancer with no common sense at all, but when combined with his Mini-Cons he becomes a cold killer.

Type 2 Examples

Judge Dredd, the movie, has a small picture holder box that, if you pull it sideways, becomes a small gun. It's smuggled inside a maximum security prison.

Darkman features a villain with a submachine gun built into his artificial leg.

Mr. Igoe in Innerspace has a single-shot suppressed gun disguised as a prosthetic hand. It's a real prosthetic in the sense Igoe is actually missing his hand, but it's designed with a pointing finger which is the gun barrel.

The Jackal from The Day of the Jackal is able to smuggle a weapon in a form of a crutch which is then disassembled and reassembled as a sniper rifle.

The sequel to The Teddy Bear Habit involves a crutch loaded with a spring-loaded dart launcher.

Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls has the storyteller, Richard, carrying a cane that has a secret knifeblade which can be released to use as a long dagger.

Live-Action TV

The Deadliest Warrior episode "KGB vs CIA" was made of this, showcasing an exploding cigar, an exploding film roll, a shoe knife, a suitcase gun and a camera gun.

In The A-Team two-part episode "The Bend in the River", South American river pirate "El Cajon" has a Sawn Off Shotgun inside his prosthetic leg, firing out of his heel.

In Michael Palin travelogue Himalaya, Palin visits the town of Darra, where gun manufacturing is the big industry. He goes to a gunsmith's shop and, while examining the merchandise, makes a joke about a James Bond-style pen gun. The gunsmith promptly shows him an actual pen gun, which can fire a .22-caliber round and also can be used as a functional pen.

Tabletop Games

The Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG has a modification called componentization, which allows a weapon or other piece of equipment to be broken down into pieces that appeared to be (and had at least limited functionality as) other devices.

Videogames

The Laptop Gun from Perfect Dark can turn into a laptop. However, it can also turn into a wall sentry. Very useful in multiplayer games.

According to the in-game description, it's an imperfect disguise. The laptop works, but has only a fraction of the memory it should. Just enough to foil the 'please turn it on' test, as well as some minor poking about. The game itself admits that under serious examination the facade will fall apart in short order.

Though it doesn't appear in the game proper, the manual for Crusader: No Regret mentioned a nanotech pistol that could turn into a functioning cell phone and back. In the game, this was used to turn furniture into hostile mechs.

Real Life

The sword-cane. The sword and sheath are combined to make a cane. There were also cane-guns.

The CIA had some weird and wonderful concealed weapons, including:

A cigarette gun.

A pen gun.

A suitcase gun.

Exploding flour which, when made into bread or cakes, could be kneaded back down into plastic explosive once you got past Customs. — read "CIA Special Weapons & Equipment: Spy Devices of the Cold War".

A foiled terror plot reported a few years back was based around a chemical explosive that was to be mixed in-flight from chemicals carried in toiletry bottles. While it wasn't successful in blowing up a plane, it did cause some terror: airlines and the TSA are now afraid of soap.

Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was assassinated while in exile in London when someone (most likely an agent of the Bulgarian Secret Police) poked him with an umbrella tipped with deadly poison. To this day, "Bulgarian umbrellas" are something of a running joke in political and intelligence circles.

It's a spin-off of the early 90s Beeper Gun, which got its inventor arrested when he tried to market it to businessmen as a hold-out piece because he didn't have the correct permits.

During WW2, M.I.9 (the intelligence directorate charged with supporting agent operations in Europe and assisting British POW's make home runs out of captivity) devised weapons including a fountain pen that could fire spring-loaded darts. These were used as nuisance weapons against German soldiers operating in occupied France, although the possibility that the darts could be poison-tipped was also there. And the pens could also be used to write with, helping them to pass superficial examination if the carrier was detained and searched. Other weapons included incendiary bombs concealed inside rat and rabbit corpses, things fastidious Germans would pass by and shudder at. The warped genius in charge of M.I.9's weapons division was later written whole and unaltered into the James Bond novels as Q.

This is part of the rationale behind the use of binary chemical weapons, one prominent example will be the Novichok series of nerve agents, which had as one of their goals to be undetectable and able to bypass NATO inspections; one strategy to achieve this was to have the agent be produced as the mix or reaction of two materials "legal" under the Chemical Weapons Treaty, and combining them just before use.

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